


Counterweight

by Colourofsaying



Category: Chalice - Robin McKinley
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 03:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2798414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colourofsaying/pseuds/Colourofsaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The House was not a labyrinth. It was large, it was dark, it contained much. Not all of what it contained was simple to discover. But for all the heaviness of the stone walls and the endless cold narrowness of the stone halls, the lines of the place fell one by one in ordered design, and at the center there was nothing at all.</p>
<p>For many, Talisman thought, it was also easy to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counterweight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).



The House was not a labyrinth. It was large, it was dark, it contained much. Not all of what it contained was simple to discover. But for all the heaviness of the stone walls and the endless cold narrowness of the stone halls, the lines of the place fell one by one in ordered design, and at the center there was nothing at all.

For many, Talisman thought, it was also easy to leave. She sighed and ran a hand through her short dark hair, pushing it out of her face. This honey Chalice had known that for her, it would not be, and Talisman wished that she had known as much when she was first chosen as the Talisman's apprentice.

But then the House had seemed exciting. It was a grand place, certainly, and the history of the demesne hung from the walls and rested on small tables – sometimes the small tables were part of the history of the house, and which was a table on which it was permissible to set a drink and which was a venerable artifact was not always readily discernible. In between the artifacts there was room enough, for the first time in her life, for her to be alone. And Talisman-that-was had promised her secrets.

And as a girl, as Arashel, she had loved secrets – the places in the wood where the rarest plants grew, the hidden things shining beneath the surface of the water, the patterns of storms forming, the gift that satisfied the heart's desire. To know what no one else knew, that was a gift worth getting. Not for the power of it – she had been young, then, and for half the demesne her smile held more weight than all she'd ever learned – but for what she might give in return. She had never known how to please when her smiles were not enough.

“You're the next Talisman, girl,” her mistress had said. She was a short woman, hard-featured and blunt of tongue, but not, Arashel-that-was had thought, unkind. “The augury's clear enough, and there's no doubt looking at you. The work will suit you, I think, as it has suited me. I have always had a taste for finding what is hidden, for balancing what is unequal, and you, I think, are much the same.”

“I would learn,” she had said, and tried a smile. It fit oddly on her face, as if it no longer belonged to her, as if she had already begun to change. Talisman-that-was had looked at her for a while, studying the planes of her face, the rich shadows of her hair, the heavy curves of her body. It should have been intimate, and was not.

When she spoke again, there was a heaviness to her voice that Arashel-that-was had not understood, for she had never known how to read the human signs she observed, and she had not yet met the Master's eldest son. “Well. It's good work, and good for the kind of people we are, you and I, but you can say no, child, and you may yet be glad you do. I'll not blame you, and for all anyone need know, I came to bring your house a talisman and that is all.”

Mutely, Arashel-that-was had shaken her head. She was a weaver’s daughter and skilled enough at the work, but it had never been more than what needed doing. To have work that only she could do, work that she could find joy in, that would be reason enough. To live in the House and have all the power of the Circle, well, it would be a fine thing, and she would not have given up the chance for all the world now she knew it was hers for the asking.

“That's it, then,” Talisman-that-was said, picking up her basket and cloak. It was a lovely thing, Arashel-that-was could see, and her heart sang that soon she would wear garments as fine and better. In bright colors, she thought, nothing like the dull gray and green of her new mistress's things. “If there's anything you can't bear to leave behind, get it, but you'll have everything you'll need as my apprentice. I'm off to tell your mother you're leaving. You can say goodbye, if you like.”

Then, she had not known why her mother wept.

Talisman realized, suddenly, that she had not seen her mother in years. She had come to the investiture of the new Master, certainly, everyone in the demesne who could had done so, but Talisman had not met her there. And for the last few years, she had not left her rooms, her sanctuary, for longer than was necessary. Perhaps now there would be time. She could bring her mother a jar of the Chalice's honey, admire her mother's latest work. They could sit together and talk. For all the comfort of her rooms, she missed the quiet sunlight of the weaving room some days.

And it had been so long since she had done something so peaceful as talk quietly in the sunlight. They had all been so lost after the Master's death, and if she had felt more freed than lost – well, the Chalice that had bound them was gone, and in any gathering there would be old hurts and old fears. In this gathering, in this Circle, whirled as they had been through the hectic passion of the Master's short rule, there were many. Even for her, it was as if she had stumbled out of some nightmarish blur of fire, only to find that the balance of the world had shifted and the earth no longer bore her weight in quite the same way.

It was not a situation to improve tempers, or to inspire forgiveness. She had had enough to do minding her own words, but in the turmoil enough had never been enough. The Circle had sundered and, if she understood the others correctly, the land had run mad from the sundering. But Talismans could never read the earthlines. Before the Master's death, she had wondered why Talisman was Circle; Talismans were necessary, but the rites of water and the bindings of earth, the everyday order and function of the demesne, these were not things that concerned them. She attended the meetings, drank what Chalice gave her, and was silent, for her work was not of theirs, and to offer an opinion would be to offer ignorance in arrogance, and that was a disservice to them all. But after, she understood.

She wondered sometimes if the new Chalice and Master had any notion of what she'd done in those days following the Master's death, before they had found Mirasol, before the new Master had been pried from his monastic fastness – not to be thanked, but to be forgiven. There had been little enough anyone might do, and what there had been she had not always done well.

At first, she had done as she had always done for the Circle – mended what was broken, formed anew what was destroyed, and the fire had destroyed much that had gone unbroken for more years than any living being or their mothers might remember. There had been records in her library, with notes and sketches, and yet the work had not gone as it should. The silver had melted awry, the molds had shaken, the chisel slipped in her grasp. The work was not ill done, in the end. But neither was it as it had been.

Nothing was as it had been.

It was not that she missed the Master, he who had died in the fire. Land forfend that she ever miss him, for he had been – there was much she did not remember, and more she would not. She had been beautiful, once. The folk of the demesne still spoke of it, when the wine ran deep and the hour long. They spoke of it, and wondered how such beauty could fade.

Not, she thought acidly, with ease. With shadows, with long nights and early mornings, with sugars and oils, with poor food and little of it. With the steam of molten metal and the heat of the forge. With silence. She had never been one for speaking, or those she spoke to were not the sort of being one generally speaks to, and in the service of the Circle she had lost her voice, her beauty, her presence. Everything but her height, and her shoulders had acquired something of a permanent stoop. She straightened them now, rolled her neck to release the tension. Perhaps what had been once could be again – but that time was past, surely, and she did not think she could enjoy her own beauty again.

There had been little to enjoy in anything, in those years – she had enjoyed the Chalice's honey, from when she was only Mirasol, though it was if anything better now. She had enjoyed mornings. Her Circle work, too – the making of talismans for the folk of the demesne, the mending of what had broken, the repair of what had been damaged. And her other work, which was not of the Circle – the Circle was earth and water, tied to the land and bound to its limits. They had little truck with air, for all they breathed it, and she had had enough to do to soothe the patterns of the air and the energies of what rode them. Enough to do, and pleasure in it, for no one troubled her in the doing, and – well, she was Talisman. And if she had not brought them luck, she had at the least saved them from the worst of the ill luck they made for themselves.

And then he had died, and Azarin, the Chalice-that-was – they had been friends when they were young, and Talisman grieved for her, for all that she had been so willingly entrammeled – and the Circle had fallen apart. All the luck she could draw down for them was not enough. The talismans she made and the rituals she performed were as strong as ever, but the weight of the opposing scale had multiplied a thousandfold, and it would not balance. Nothing she could do as Talisman would balance it.

She had had very little hope left by the choosing of the Chalice. They had all been pulled to it without thought or will, and even so it had nearly failed at the start. Oakstaff had been late, Sunbrightener in his cups as he had been since the death of Clearseer-that-was. Prelate, who had never liked young Clearseer, had only reluctantly handed over the rods of augury, and when they fell and the Circle that remained saw who the rods named, he had insisted that it could not be, that Clearseer had failed in his duty. Clearseer tossed the rods again. And again. Each time, they fell the same, and slowly, Talisman realized that to the Prelate, it did not matter who the rods named. It would never be right, for the only person who ever could be was dead.

She had looked at the Grand Seneschal, then. Surely he would stop this, he who was the first of them all now. He was the strongest, the most experienced – he had been Grand Seneschal to the Master's father, even. Surely he would make this right.

But he stood as they all stood, and suddenly Talisman was afraid. She could see the pattern, now – in another moment, Prelate would shout again, and this time, Clearseer would not pick up the rods. He would face Prelate, the rods would fall. They would shatter against the floor, and the Circle would shatter with them. The demesne would fall, and all the consequences of that fall with it. Want. Bloodshed. Starvation. Disease. She had read the histories as deeply as anyone and more than most.

And the rest of the Circle was bound up in it, half-mad from their land sense and still bound together by the tattered remnants of Azarin-Chalice's bindings. It was such a little thing to weigh against the demesne, one man's grief and fear, but it was enough to tip the balance.

Talisman stepped forward.

“Forgive me, Lord Prelate,” she said, as humbly as she knew how. “I may be wrong, for I am poorly versed in high Circle matters, but cannot a Chalice be changed, if the earthlines reject her later? And perhaps it is so that Clearseer throws the rods awry, but perhaps it is the earth that warps their fall. It would be hard to lose another Chalice, even one unfit, but is it not harder to be without one?”

The Prelate moved to answer her. He would not be kind, she knew, but she was used to unkind words. They were not so hard to bear. But then the Grand Seneschal lifted his head, as if waking from a long sleep.

“The rods have spoken, Prelate,” he said abruptly. “Spoken, and spoken again. They will have the beekeeper's daughter or no one. Let it rest.”

And the Grand Seneschal was second to none, now, for the Chalice and the Master were dead. The Prelate bowed his head. For a little longer, the Circle held.

 

Talisman had always liked Mirasol, in the few moments she had thought of her before she was Chalice. She seemed like a nice girl, competent. And her honey was delicious. It was no hard thing to wish her well. Even had the Chalice passed in a more usual manner, she would have done what she might to help her.

But the Chalice had not passed in a usual manner, and what she might do to help had been, she knew, woefully inadequate. She had felt like a weaver nearing the end of her weft when the wool would not hold, chasing strand after loose strand and desperately hoping the main would hold until she could take the weaving from the loom. Landsman had wanted to oust Mirasol from her holding and she had stalled him. Oakstaff had wanted Mirasol's trees, and Talisman had somehow managed to deny him. She had done all she could to give the new Chalice space and time, as much time as could be had.

She had not, however, spoken to Mirasol, and for that, she needed forgiveness. It had seemed to her then that the child would have more than enough to do to learn her job, without interference well-meant or otherwise, and that to advise her would be to do her a disservice. And she had not known what advice could be given. She had not thought – she had become Talisman when she was young, but it had not mattered so much. The work came easily to her, and she had been an apprentice for long enough to know where knowledge she needed might be found and what could and could not be changed and improvised. But the Chalice had had no such history and Talisman knew, guiltily, that it had not been easy – had nearly been impossible – and her isolation had made it more so. Had Liapnir-that-was not come, had he not been who he was – but he had had the land-sense, and he had had the Chalice's trust.

She didn't know if the Chalice knew that she had given him her trust at his arrival, had perhaps trusted him before he arrived. She had stood at the foot of the steps and held the cup for their new Master, and she had not flinched when he burned her. Not because it had not hurt – Talisman had seen the wound from her place behind the Chalice, and had flinched for her – but because he had not meant to harm her, and would not have done so if he could have prevented it.

And inhuman as he was, then, Talisman had seen him reel a little at the Chalice's conviction. It had been intoxicating enough from the traces left in the ritual chalices at the bindings. Talisman had known, then, that it was possible. So she had watched, and when Sunbrightener and Keepfast quarreled, when Prelate denied Clearseer the use of the rods, when Oakstaff and Landsman claimed right to the disposal of the same holding, she had sorted them out as best she could, added her weight to whichever side of the balance became unequal, and neither the Chalice nor the Master had ever known. They had been drunk on the land-sense, drunk to the point of sickness, and still she was not sure if either had been more than peripherally aware of anyone else.

Once, she had spoken of it to the Grand Seneschal. He had come to her in the morning, when she was on the roof preparing for her rituals. The air had been clear, but the sort of clear that says it is deeply uncertain of the virtue of clarity, and she had been in something of a hurry. But one did not deny the Grand Seneschal, even when one might get rained on because of it. Even if he had very politely knocked, and waited till she might easily break off her work.

“I will not keep you long,” he said. “I cannot in reason even spend so much time speaking with you, but I must – and you cannot in reason spend so much time speaking with me, I know, and I thank you for doing so anyway.”

“As the Grand Seneschal wishes,” she had said politely, looking at the roof tiles.

“No,” he said, and made as if to come towards her. She had not been able to contain her flinch. When she managed to look up at him, he looked older. “I see. But you are Circle as much as I, and I would not trouble you in your work were it not that I think I must. I have not been – there is much that I have not done as I should of late, and I must thank you – and beg your forgiveness. It should not have fallen on you to do what I have failed to do.”

“I have only done what is right,” she had said. “And – a Talisman is not Circle, not in the way that – that Landsman or Clearseer or – or Chalice is Circle.”

“Talismans can leave the demesne and be none the worse for it,” he had told her, “but they are no less a member of the Circle for that gift. It cannot have been easy for you to do as you have done, not after – it cannot have been easy, and I thank you for it, if you will have none of my apology.”

“There is no need,” she had said. “But thank you for your thanks.”

He had turned to go, but paused and spoke to her over his shoulder.

“I think – I know that I, that we have failed you in more than this. And it is a failure I do not think I can allow you to diminish for me as you have done for this. I cannot remedy it, now, but perhaps I can relieve you of some of the burden of it, if you allow me to.” She had been silent and after a while he had nodded and once more made to leave. As he turned to close the rooftop door behind him, he spoke once more. “I would that you would.”

 

Since the settling of the inheritance, she had had much less to do to hold the Circle. There was not much left of it to hold; instead, it grew forth from the remains of the old, strong and blooming. No one blamed her fellows for resigning their duties. It had been an acknowledgment of their failure by the land, the Master, and the Chalice, and a gift to the demesne, for with the resignation of their duties came the promise of a new pattern, untainted by fire and fear and grief. She had balanced the Circle till the Chalice and Master could take their places, and now she could let go.

But it had not been so easy to step back into the shadows. She could not step so quietly, and in the new bright air of the House her shoulders had gradually unbowed, her back tall. She could not be silent, and it was not her place, she knew, to speak. Perhaps it was nearly time for her to resign as well – there was doubtless another girl with a gift for patterns and an eye for balance somewhere in the demesne, and it would not be so hard to teach her enough of what she knew to leave. She could leave. She could go back to her mother, sit down once more behind the loom, settle into the ordinary power of her own home. There would be sunlit afternoons again.

She would never have to close her doors or bar them.

She wouldn't even have doors. She had never known what it was to have space of her own before she became the Talisman's apprentice.

She stood, smoothed her robes over her breast and hips, shook out the hem. Ran a hand through her hair again. If she left, she would live in her mother's house again. The pattern of her days would not be her own, and the work she did would not be hers. She would not be lonely, but she would be no more free – the balance would swing again and again she would be on the lighter side and wanting.

A knock came at the door, and she froze. It was a light knock. A light knock. Nothing like his had been. She took a deep breath, opened the door.

The Chalice had changed since the settling of the demesne – she had grown to reflect her own abundance, softness in her features and generosity in the curves of her body. It was no wonder to Talisman, though few others had guessed, that a former priest of Fire would be so drawn to the warmth of their Chalice.

“Arashel,” she said. “Or – should I call you Talisman, still?”

No one had called her Arashel since Azarin, Chalice-that-was, had died. She shook her head.

“Then you must call me Mirasol, when we are not engaged in Circle business. I was wondering – Nicandimon told me that your work, when you are not repairing cups dented and damaged by clumsy Chalices, is most often on the roof, and I thought that it seemed – I thought you might wish to be somewhere more open to the air, if you could. We found a set of rooms when we were cleaning, and – it's high up, but the windows are larger and it leads directly to the roof. I couldn't bear it myself, to be so far from the land, but if you wanted -”

Talisman looked around her rooms. They had seemed so grand when she arrived at the House, large stone rooms with wide windows, space just for her and no one else. Now, the heavy stone seemed cold and the windows small in the thick walls. The bar across the door seemed to mock her, the heavy plank almost too much for her to lift, the iron bars as strong as she could forge them. Safety. Sanctuary.

No one had ever told her that to be safe would be to be lonely.

“I would – I would like that,” she said. She would take the doors of her new rooms from their hinges, hide them away in some closet. If she needed them, they would be there. “Thank you for thinking of it. It was very kind.”

“It was Nicci's idea, actually,” the Chalice said. “Well, in part. I found the rooms and he thought you might like them, except that they were so open. But I think this House has been closed up long enough.”

There was a bee perched on Mirasol’s shoulder. It took off, spiraling up into the air, exploring the new space. They watched it for a while. Eventually, it settled on one of Talisman’s hammers, walking up and down it as if it were testing this new surface with its tiny feet. Talisman found herself smiling.

“I think,” she said slowly, “That I have been closed up longer. Thank you again, Mirasol.”

“Thank you, Arashel.” Mirasol smiled up at her, bright and golden. A while ago, Clearseer had mentioned that everything seen in Mirasol’s honey took on the same hue as the honey - at the time he had thought it overly optimistic, but she found herself wondering if, perhaps, he had seen more truly than he realized. “Come to tea at the cottage sometime? The bees like you.”

“I will,” she said, smiling back. As if in response to the Chalice’s words, the bee left the hammer and came buzzing up to rest on Talisman’s head. The weight and tickle of it were not, she decided, unpleasant at all. “But today, I think I will go and see my mother.”

**Author's Note:**

> Talisman  
> An object, typically an inscribed ring or stone, that is thought to have magic powers and to bring good luck.  
> Origin – mid 17th century; based on Arabic 'tilsam', apparently from an alteration of late Greek 'telesma' (completion, religious rite) from 'telein' (complete, perform a rite) from 'telos' (result, end).
> 
> (explanation of why Talisman's powers became what I described them as)
> 
> Master  
> Chalice  
> Grand Seneschal (third)  
> Prelate (fourth)(keeps the seeing rod things)  
> Talisman (is tall and was very beautiful – minor Circle)(speaks to no one)  
> Clearseer (minor circle)  
> Weatheraugur (minor circle)  
> Sunbrightener (minor circle)  
> Keepfast (minor circle)  
> Landsman (minor circle)  
> Oakstaff (minor circle)
> 
> (list of all members of the Circle)


End file.
